from the this-is-defamation? dept

The Groove Tiger alerts us to the news coming out of Peru, of a blogger, Jose Alejandro Godoy, who has been sentenced to three years in jail and fined over $100,000 (Google translation of the original Spanish) for writing a blog post about a Peruvian politician, Jorge Mufarech. The post linked to various news reports of criminal charges made against Mufarech in the past, and Mufarech claimed that such links were defamatory. Godoy pointed out that the information he wrote about was well-sourced and came from others, and also that he had offered Mufarech a right to reply, if he wanted it. Yet, the court still found him guilty of criminal defamation, leading to the jailtime. Godoy is appealing, but just the fact that the case has gone this far should be seen as quite troubling.

Re: Of course that only happens in third-world countries.

It doesn't matter what country you are in, or what town you are in. People who are running for Government Office do not want their dirty laundry aired out to the public. If that dirty laundry was aired out they sure as hell don't want you to remember. They don't want that to come back, and sway the voters. Just like you wouldn't want any of the really embarrassing stuff you did to come out.

On top of that the politician over reacted to the blog, and didn't take the chance to take the guy up on his offer to refute what was being posted.